What’s up with Justified‘s Winona? Is Patton Oswalt sticking around? And do Raylan and Boyd even like each other?

During a panel at the Television Critics Association’s winter press tour in Pasadena on Wednesday, the FX series’ cast — including Timothy Olyphant, Walton Goggins and Joelle Carter — and creator Graham Yost dished all about what’s to come on the drama’s just-launched Season 4.

BUSTED BROMANCE | Estranged pals (?) Raylan and Boyd may finally, officially become foes by Season 4’s end. “There’s one line, that Boyd has never said in the previous three seasons, that he says this season. It’s really interesting to me and an indication to where they’ve come in the relationship,” Goggins recalled. “He looks at Raylan at one point and says, ‘Raylan, I don’t like you.’ It’s the first time he’s ever really said it that way.” Adds the actor: “Over the course of their relationship, Boyd has seen their friendship one way and Raylan has seen it as something else, and by the end of this season they may see it the same way: That is that they don’t like each other.”

WINONA’S WHEREABOUTS |Natalie Zea — who at the end of last season landed a co-starring role on Fox’s buzzy new series The Following — will first reprise her role as Raylan’s baby mama in Episode 5, as well as in two or three other Season 4 installments. That said, Yost shared that Winona’s MIA status this season isn’t only because of her portrayer’s new gig. “We just couldn’t imagine why Winona was still hanging by Raylan if his life was this dangerous and [that’s] not what she wanted,” he explained. “It also gave us a chance to make Raylan a ladies’ man.”

ABSENT ENEMY | As you no doubt gleaned from last night’s premiere, there’s no real baddie this season. Instead, Raylan & Co. will be faced with various challenges throughout the year, starting with Arlo’s mysterious bag. “We thought that would be a fun thing to try this year instead of just another Big Bad,” Yost said. “We start parsing out bits of mystery in the first four episodes, and by the fifth episode everything is pretty much focused on that… The mystery actually gets solved in the ninth episode, but then there are problems that come [from solving it] and that plays out for the rest of the season.”

SAME FACES, NEW STORIES | “In the fourth season, the stories have opened up to us a little bit more,” the EP mused, revealing that we’ll finally delve deeper into the lives of longtime recurring players Tim and Rachel. “To give them their own stories is something we’re doing for the first time this season. It’s time to do it. We know the audience wants it, so we found room for it.”

PATTON NOT PENDING | So long as Justified newbie Patton Oswalt ‘is willing to play,’ he’ll be “a part of our world,” Yost gushed.

I can only guess that the EP’s/ writers approach each new seaon with a new villain and a new storyline in mind, Limehouse was relevant to last season’s plot involving Quarles etc. and since they’ve now moved on, he has very little to offer in regards to this season’s storyline; remember he was a banker for the baddies. Also, Limehouse and his crew basically lived in a world of their own across the bridge and most of the interesting things that took place happened in his domain. Season four is completely different in that their is no new big baddie, but its the solving of an old mystery so again, his character is made pointless as he would have nothing to contribute to the storyline. There is a breakdown of the current season on the Entertainment Weekly website which can give you a lot of insight into the series. I like the fact that the writers keep the episodes really tight and they have such a great handle (just type Justified into the search bar and it will come up) on the characters, nobody shows up on this show without playing a significant role, whether we can immediately see it or not, but there is always a good reason.

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to read the scoops but I love me some Justified, thank you! I was trying to go in fresh this season, ohh well! I love how there isn’t a “Big Bad” this season, it’s going beyond your typical tv drama. And I’m looking forward to Tim n Rachel’s stories!

Yay for Tim getting his own stories! He is someone I want to get to know. Boo for Raylan being a ladies’ man. I don’t like that. I don’t mind if Raylan feels like he’s in some love triangle, torn between two women he loves like he was in the first season, but I don’t want to see Raylan as a man wh*re. I’m not going to like him near as much if they do that to him. I want him to be faithful. Speaking of which, I was kind of bugged by last night’s gratuitous female nudity. Okay, for one thing, you’ve got this woman walking around a room completely buck naked, and then you have Timothy Olyphant standing there wearing a towel. That’s not fair. Why did he get to be so overdressed? Second of all, the scene didn’t really feel like it fit, it was jarring, and I felt like it was specifically put in there to bump ratings, not because it was important to the plot in any way. It was a bizarre thing they went to that kind of effort to build a set and go through all that filming just for a 5-second cutaway scene that didn’t really need to be in the show. This is probably making me sound like a priss, and I can assure you, I am not. I can watch Homeland and Boardwalk Empire sex scenes and be totally fine with it. That one scene just felt really out of place in last night’s Justified episode. Gratuitous sex for the whole purpose of being gratuitous annoys me. Anyhoo, I’m glad Patton is sticking around. And for the whole Raylan and Boyd hate each other thing…I always thought they did. I never thought there was love there. Their whole bond comes from them working together in the mine, and Boyd saved Raylan’s life down there, right? I never thought those two actually liked each other, just that they shared a bond.

While I agree that the scene felt a little weird, I wouldn’t call a butt shot ‘gratuitous’. Besides, they had a butt shot of Quarles last season, and Raylan is routinely shirtless, so I’d say the objectification on the show is pretty fairly shared among the cast members.

I agree with you about Raylan and Boyd’s bond, Britta. I never took it as them liking each other either or even what you could call friendship.(In this decade, at least.) It always seemed more to me like mutual respect despite being on opposite sides of the law.

I kind of got the impression that Boyd liked Raylan, but mostly because they’ve been largely on the same side for the second and third season. I’m curious to see if that changes this season now that Boyd’s criminal enterprise is getting more and more nefarious.